Facebook to Pull All Ads from Pages with 'Violent, Graphic, or Sexual Content'

Starting next Monday, if you operate a page or group that contains any violent, graphic, or sexual content, you're going on Facebook's blacklist for ads.

In an effort to assure advertisers that their ads will no longer appear next to any unsavory content, Facebook is going to vastly expand the list of ad-restricted pages and groups.

"For example, we will now seek to restrict ads from appearing next to Pages and Groups that contain any violent, graphic or sexual content (content that does not violate our community standards). Prior to this change, a Page selling adult products was eligible to have ads appear on its right-hand side; now there will not be ads displayed next to this type of content," says the company.

It's not really clear how many pages and groups this will affect - Facebook has a pretty strict policy on sexual content. But there's obviously enough pages that fall into this Facebook grey zone to warrant such a move.

Facebook says that they are already vigilant in protecting marketers from possible bad PR situations, but that this will help them be even more effective.

"We know that marketers work hard to promote their brands, and we take their objectives seriously. While we already have rigorous review and removal policies for content against our terms, we recognize we need to do more to prevent situations where ads are displayed alongside controversial Pages and Groups. So we are taking action."

The review and removal process will start slow - real life humans will make the decisions. But in the near future, Facebook says that they will develop an automated system to make sure ads no longer appear next to this questionable content.